SARAH'S POV
Sarah's hands wouldn't stop shaking.
She stood in front of her studio and stared at the yellow police tape crisscrossed over the doors like scars. Like her studio had been attacked. Like it was a crime scene.
It was still dark outside. She'd come early to work on the spring collection. She had ideas that wouldn't let her sleep. Ideas that only made sense at five in the morning when the world was quiet.
Now the world was ending.
A police officer stood near the entrance. He looked at her with pity when she approached.
"This is my studio," she said. It came out like a question.
"Not anymore it isn't," he said gently. "The building was seized this morning. You'll need to contact the property owner."
Sarah's brain couldn't process the words. Seized. That meant legal trouble. That meant something had gone very wrong with the partnership agreement. That meant Dominic.
She called him immediately.
His secretary answered. "Mr. Steele is unavailable. Can I take a message?"
"This is Sarah Chen. I need to speak with him right now. My studio has been seized. There's police tape on the doors."
There was a pause. A terrible pause that told Sarah everything before anyone said anything.
"One moment, Ms. Chen."
She was put on hold. Elevator music played while her entire life dissolved around her. Two minutes later, the secretary came back.
"Mr. Steele cannot see you. If you have questions regarding the partnership agreement, please contact your lawyer."
Sarah hung up.
Her lawyer's office was in Manhattan. She drove there in a daze, running red lights, not caring if she got pulled over. Nothing mattered anymore. The city looked the same but felt different, like she was seeing it through broken glass.
Her lawyer, Marcus Webb, looked at her like she was someone he'd never met before. Like she was a stranger bringing him bad news instead of a woman he'd been helping for three years.
"Sit down, Sarah," he said.
She didn't sit. She stood in front of his desk while her hands shook and her breath came in short gasps.
"The partnership agreement you signed," he continued, "contained a clause that gave Dominic Steele the right to acquire full ownership if the company failed to meet certain targets within the first year."
"What targets?" Sarah's voice didn't sound like her own.
"Growth benchmarks. Expansion goals. Financial projections." He turned his computer monitor toward her and showed her the numbers. They were impossible. No startup company could hit those numbers. Nobody could hit those numbers.
"He set us up to fail," Sarah whispered.
"Yes. He did. And this morning, he activated the acquisition clause. He now owns Chen Designs completely. You're no longer an employee or partner. You're terminated effective immediately."
The room tilted.
"What about my designs? My sketches? Everything I created?"
"They belong to him. They're part of the company assets."
Sarah felt something break inside her chest. Not her heart. Something deeper. Something that held her together when everything else fell apart. She'd built Chen Designs from nothing. Every sketch was a piece of her soul. Every design was something she'd poured hours into. Every collection represented a part of her vision.
And it all belonged to him now.
"There's a severance," Marcus said quietly, sliding a check across his desk. "Fifty thousand dollars."
Sarah stared at it. Fifty thousand dollars. For three years of work. For her entire dream. For her soul served up on a legal document.
It was an insult.
"That's not enough," she said numbly.
"No," Marcus agreed. "It's not. But it's what the contract allows. I'm sorry, Sarah. I should have insisted you read everything before you signed. I should have been more careful."
Sarah left his office without taking the check. She didn't want his money. She didn't want anything that came from the destruction of everything she'd built.
She drove to Dominic's building with her hands gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles went white. The rage was building inside her like a storm. Like something that could destroy everything in its path. Like the same kind of destruction he'd just inflicted on her.
She parked illegally and walked into his building.
The security guard at the front desk recognized her. "Ms. Chen, Mr. Steele isn't—"
She didn't stop. She walked past him like he didn't exist, like she had every right to be there, like she was someone important enough that they couldn't stop her. The elevator was glass. She watched the city get smaller as she rose higher, watched her life get smaller too.
Fifty-second floor.
His office was exactly like she remembered. Cold. Expensive. Empty.
His secretary looked up in shock. "Ms. Chen, you can't just—"
Sarah walked past her too.
Dominic was at his desk. He looked up when she burst through the door and something flickered across his face. Surprise maybe. Or satisfaction. With him it was hard to tell.
"Sarah," he said, standing up like they were old friends meeting for coffee. "This is unexpected."
She couldn't speak. The rage and heartbreak and betrayal were all tangled together in her throat, choking her. She opened her mouth and nothing came out but a sound like drowning.
"You destroyed me," she finally managed.
Dominic walked around his desk. He moved like he had all the time in the world. Like this conversation was something he'd been waiting for.
"I bought your company," he said calmly. "That's what partners do. We make business decisions."
"You lied to me. You set us up to fail. You pretended to believe in me while you were planning to take everything."
"Yes," he said simply. "I did."
The honesty of it was worse than a lie would have been. At least a lie would have given her something to argue against. This admission was just the truth. Cold. Final. Destroying.
"Why?" Her voice broke on the word.
Dominic was quiet for a long moment. Then he turned back to his desk like she'd already disappeared.
"Because you were naive," he said without looking at her. "Because you believed in things. Because you thought the world could be better. And I needed to prove to myself that people like you don't actually survive in the real world. That dreams are weakness. That I was right to never believe in anything."
Sarah felt the last piece of her hope shatter.
"You destroyed me," she whispered. "You destroyed my dream."
"Yes," he said, still not looking at her. "I did. The deal is done, Sarah. There's nothing you can do about it. You can leave now."
She turned and walked out of his office on legs that didn't feel like they belonged to her. As she waited for the elevator, she caught her reflection in the glass doors. She looked broken. She looked destroyed.
She looked like someone who had nothing left to lose.
The elevator doors opened and Sarah stepped inside, and somewhere deep inside, beneath all the pain and betrayal and rage, something shifted. Something dangerous.
She was done being destroyed.